contractions, pt 1, or, our loving, intelligent cosmos
meditations on saturn in pisces, life in process & upcoming offerings
hi! some divination and info about my fall offerings below. the quick of it:
i have space set aside sept-oct for a handful of new clients — click here to schedule
i will teach ebm again starting sometime in oct/nov. the course is 8-weeks, live online and recorded, and costs $295 — click here to get on the waiting list
new, in-person classes still happening — all details available via inner space
i ask to be shown the opportunity offered the collective at this time relative to the full expression of the human purpose. i’m taken to a city, futuristic and densely populated, where i am but one of a faceless human mass, surrounded by people but incredibly isolated. abruptly, a light, pouring down around me in a shaft from a mysterious pyramid way up in space. the imagery, sort of cheesy, new age, cinematic (perhaps because we just watched eternals the other night), the emotions, startling, i feel deeply touched by the loving, knowing witness of this force. also humbled, a bit paranoid, it’s kind of like the truman show, am i really this special, impactful, important? really, this whole thing is about the divine coming to know itself through my singular life?
and then i look around me, start to realize that everyone else walks in their own spotlight, everyone else carries a spark. the story is not one of ascension, necessarily, definitely not escape, but of mystery, the unfathomable love and complexity of all of us being so singularly vital and also so normal for it, all of us being here at this time, together, doing our best to uncover our lights …
i want to share something that feels pretty vulnerable in this context: my life is far from perfect. i’ve been alcohol-free for 11 years, teaching almost 10, studying with my current teachers for almost 6. one task as teachers, mine reminds me often, borrowing from the taoists, is not to teach from what we know, or are still learning, but to teach from “what we’ve already forgotten.” i do have a level of mastery in many spheres of my life that would have been unimaginable to me in times past — somatics, movement, art, community building, group process and ceremonial practice, healing trauma, addictions and chronic illness, navigating life with conscious, practical spirit guidance.
and yet. and yet!!! i still often struggle to pay my rent, some months, still indulge addictive patterns, like that extra scoop of peanut butter before bed even though i’m supposed to be on the interval fast, victimize myself to things outside of anyone’s control, aka why aren’t healing, teaching, childcare, art, etc valued the same as hedge funds, derivatives markets, corporate real estate, etc?!, still get triggered and lash out, you do not want to have been at the lunch i just had with my parents, let’s just leave it at that…!
and yet…and yet…!!! i’m starting to realize that all of these foibles and fuck-ups and very painfully evident (to me at least) gaps between who i am and who i want to be, between what i teach and how i sometimes act, are exactly what make me good at what i do. because i know how hard it is and i’m not lying to myself about that. i’m not pretending to have ‘got it,’ ‘transcended,’ ‘evolved,’ or ‘finished.’ another thing my teacher often reminds me: you don’t have to have ‘figured it all out.’ when we put ourselves on pedestals and separate from the people we serve as teachers, leaders, practitioners, etc, is often when we have the most capacity for harm. (this is often an innocent coping mechanism because we’ve out-grown our own skillsets and healing and don’t know where to go next but now we’ve got students and followers and we need their money to support ourselves and don’t know where to go next without losing the delicate balance we’ve created in our online spiritual wellness business or whatever the fuck — you know, just contemporary uninitiated child who is genuinely trying to help in a fucked up world with lots of bad examples stuff!)
knowing, and being brutally honest with myself about exactly where i’m at is what gives me the capacity to offer a hand or a step up to those who need it, and to also send them to someone else when i can’t.
i also know, and am learning to embrace the reality that even with the best training, teaching, coaching, therapy, soul-level healing, spirit guidance or self-development that money can buy, you too will still fuck up! i just know that, with the right tools, containers and support our fuck-ups become valuable learning (and humility!), our tensions and conflicts can become opportunities for growth, and we can divine from the mess exactly what life process is attempting to unfold and how to give it exactly what it needs to complete, all while growing ever more loving, curious, compassionate and patient with ourselves and all the other humans (and other-than-humans!) that make up this thing we experience as ‘life.’ to hurt and get hurt (within an acceptable range, of course) and stay in relationship, stay with the moment rather than running away or shutting down, even when it really, royally, tremendously sucks … frankly, it’s still something i still often wrestle with. it doesn’t actually seem to get easier, necessarily, i just remember more and more that yep, no matter how hard this feels, i really can do it.
deep down, i actually love the hard moments, live for their challenge, really, especially in hindsight. and one of the things i love the most, which is one of the main reasons i do it, is to help others sit in the same kind of shit and wrestle, divine, flail (lol), learn and grow from it. for some these are incredibly challenging seasons or moments — big grief, family conflict, transforming the way we hold deeply entrenched patterns of fear, pain or illness — for some, they’re more curious — like, what the hell am i doing here and why did it take me so long to ask that? i just finished a really big, hard, important thing and now i feel this weird kind of emptiness and wonder what can possibly be next? or, why can’t i stop putting everyone else first in all my relationships? or why the hell do i feel so possessed to make the weirdest, wildest, least obviously-marketable art and how do i make a living doing that?!
so, the offer:
i have space set aside sept-oct for a handful of new clients — click here to schedule
what this looks like:
we start with a spirit circle, 90 minutes to untangle the stuff, get perspective from spirit about it and chart a course based on what comes up.
this can fluidly lead us into a season of joint work, over 3 or 6 more weeks. these packages are about creating conscious containers to tackle whatever comes up as you work to integrate your intake session, bringing forward whatever is needed to create transformation around that and support you in living this new you in your actual life.
where this puts you and what it looks like is really up to you, your soul and the needs of your individual process, but often it dovetails beautifully with the need to upgrade your skillset and personal practice, which is part of why i’m committed to offering energy body mastery roughly every 6 months because i’ve found it to be just that important and necessary given everything else i could teach.
i will teach ebm again starting sometime in oct/nov. the course is 8-weeks, live online and recorded, and costs $295 — click here to get on the waiting list
brief detour about ebm:
ebm as a curriculum was brought together in this current form by my teacher and the originator of the cycle teachings (christina pratt) precisely to meet the needs of client after client who were receiving powerful, effective shamanic healings but weren’t able to integrate them into everyday life. these teachings also respond beautifully to folks who have done any kind of advanced spiritual or somatic work of any tradition but struggle to ground their expanded consciousness and advanced tool-kits in a coherent daily practice. AND, this work still has ample space for folks who haven’t necessarily done any of that and may be completely new to energy or spirit stuff but need to figure out how to both survive and thrive in this contemporary climate of chaos and crisis. ebm is about cultivating coherent mind-body-spirit presence grounded on the earth. ebm is a pre-requisite for all other advanced shamanic work in our system, and the gateway to further explorations with last mask center online or the cycle community if you’re wanting to go that route, but also super open-ended. i have seen so many folks take these tools and run amok with them in directions i could never have anticipated, surprising themselves and their loved ones with the new quality of empowerment and embodiment they’re able to cultivate through relatively simple practice.
a little more about my way of doing spirit work, if you like:
for starters, it is work! some of which can / must be done on your behalf, some of which you must do yourself.
spirit circles with me often contain elements of —
spiritual guidance - connecting with and or connecting you with your spirit help to receive messages medicine and support
spiritual healing - addressing energetic or spiritual issues on your behalf or facilitating your own self-directed interventions
coaching + strategy - interpreting the messages we receive (or even the ones you already walk in with from your own life or practice), strategizing a doable path forward and supporting you in whatever way you need to actually do it
somatic integration - supporting you in transforming the stuck or outmoded internal stuff that inevitable comes up when we try to heal, grow or make a significant shift or do anything important to us
but who / what the heck are these spirits?!
in the cosmology of the cycle teachings — which tracks pretty smoothly with what we often refer to as ‘shamanic’ cosmologies, in the sense of tending some core functions that take a culture beyond animism (i.e. everything is alive, connected, has a spirit, etc) to shamanism (i.e. there are ways that humans can learn to live in balance with the interconnected spiritual everything, including each other, that are good for life, and many ways that aren’t) — everyone has helping spirits. could be a deity, guardian angel, ancestral guide or plant medicine spirit. in my work, they often show up as animals first, but really the sky and cultural imaginary are the limit for the forms and faces they take for us.
this situates us firmly in the hypothesis of this being a generally loving, intelligent, supportive universe / planet, aka the opportunity spirit dropped on us via the divination at the top of the post! not a safe, comfortable or easy cosmos to inhabit mind you, but we do have help.
the shamanic tools i’ve learned to hold are super specific. this is beyond intuition and gesturing at vague spiritual presences. i craft specific questions, bring them into formal divinatory practice and interpret the answers within an intact, living cosmology which holds and surrounds my spiritual community and my life. what comes forward by engaging your helping spirits in this way can be challenging, scarily accurate, deeply resonant and/or/also still downright trigger the heck out of us, but i will always endeavor to empower your free will, agency and inner knowing first and foremost. this work is not about taking anyone’s word for it but about being good scientists: trying what works, evaluating what doesn’t and always being willing to go back to the drawing board and examine where we may not have heard, interpreted or taken an action right.
there is sooo much more to say about animism, shamanism, spirituality, etc, but this post is already massive and saturn in pisces is trying to get us to crystallize and contract, right? rather than drift in the mist. let’s just say this: i take as an article of faith, backed up by copious experience, that we can all cultivate access to spirit, if we want it, however we define it, given the uniqueness of our particular gifts, challenges and cultural contexts. and, particularly important for most contemporary folks now, we can learn how to work with spirit without letting the healing and empowerment we find through our spirit allies get warped into weapons or drugs by our cultural defaults.
at its most expansive, for me, spirit is the organizing intelligence inherent to all of reality, beings and things, eco- and cosmic, material, imaginal, tangible and abstract. the fact that spirit chooses coherent face sand forms through which to relate to us is mysterious, miraculous, and continues to feed, teach and stimulate my heart beyond anything else. this work has deeply enriched my life, which is why i want to share it. because, if nothing else, this world definitely needs a healthy dose of mystery, magic and richness, and most contemporary people can really benefit from a stronger connection with the felt sense that, somewhere out there (and usually right there with you!) there are loving, compassionate, powerful spirits who have your fucking back, no matter what. who knows? you may be just like me — a normal, complex, messy human (probably!), looking for more than the grab bag of crazy that is the average cultural inheritance (right?), and maybe a healthy dose of authentic spirit work is the thing you’ve been missing most.
thank you so much for reading, liking, offering your feedback and possibly feeling into your heart and sharing with the folks in your networks (even just that one friend or loved one) who you think may most resonate or benefit from my work!
with big big love for this big, beautiful cosmos,
alexis